


Farewell

by Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody



Series: Flower Town [6]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ensemble Cast, F/F, F/M, Found Families, Hollow Bastion | Radiant Garden, M/M, Other, Past Child Abuse, college town
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:08:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody/pseuds/Six_Piece_Chicken_McNobody
Summary: The year has turned like the moon, like the tide, like the leaf that heralds a coming storm. It's time for wayfinders to do what they do best and enter uncharted territory. It's time for scientists to do what they do best and discover patterns.And it's time for nobodies to do what they do best and disappear.
Relationships: Aeleus & Even & Ienzo (Kingdom Hearts), Aqua & Terra & Ventus (Kingdom Hearts), Aqua/Tifa (Kingdom Hearts), Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé/Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts)
Series: Flower Town [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1401826
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	1. Let's Just Say I've Got Your Back

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the obligatory "sorry this took so long, this year has been crazy, you know how it is" intro. To any readers who have been waiting for an update: really, I'm sorry, and thank you for still being here.  
> This part of the story is going to be a little less "slice of life" and a little more "shit hits the fan" than previous installments. Things get a bit darker and heavier. Just so you know.  
> Also: please don't be fooled by the title. This is NOT the finale of the Flower Town series. There will be one more part after this one.  
> Anyway, enjoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Vanitas and Naminé.

Naminé stood at the stove, the steam from the pot of noodles before her tingling her eyebrows. Aside from the shower Vanitas was about to take, this pot of water was currently the greatest source of heat in her tiny apartment. She smiled a little to herself as she gave her dinner another stir. It had been over a week since Vanitas moved in, yet he still announced whenever he was going to take a shower, as if he needed to clear it with her schedule, or even as if he required permission to use the bathroom at all. This evening marked the first time that he’d simply gone in without feeling compelled to justify it, and Naminé hoped he stayed in there for as long as he wanted. The water would go a long way toward keeping him warm, and he desperately needed to relax.

It wasn’t even three minutes before the bathroom door flew open and Vanitas flew out of it, almost tripping over his bare feet. Naminé fumbled with the tongs in her hands and barely managed to catch them before they splashed into the boiling water.

“What?” she asked in alarm as she laid the tongs down and turned to Vanitas. She wasn’t sure what could have gone wrong—she hadn’t even heard the shower turn on. He stood in the no man’s land between the kitchen and the family room, clearly trying to calm himself down and just as clearly failing.

“Vanitas, what?” Naminé asked again, taking a tentative step closer, afraid she might spook him even more. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“There’s—”

As soon as he began to speak, he understood how ridiculous he was being: bolting out of the bathroom without warning, wearing only a pair of boxers and an old T-shirt, looking like he was about to have a heart attack. He tried to regain his nonexistent composure and said, as nonchalantly as he could, “There’s just a, uh...a spider. In the corner of the shower. Like, on the ceiling.”

Naminé stared at him for a moment, but if she found his behavior as pathetic as he did, she didn’t say so. She turned the heat down on the stove and walked past him, straight into the bathroom to assess the situation for herself. Vanitas inched up behind her, trying to help direct her toward the threat while keeping a safe distance from it. “It’s right up there,” he said, pointing at the far corner of the shower.

Naminé slid the curtain aside and leaned into the stall, and Vanitas had to fight the urge to grab her and pull her back to safety. “Where?” she asked.

Vanitas poked his head into the bathroom again and looked up at the corner. “Oh my god. I swear, it was _right_ there. I knew I shouldn’t have left it—”

“Oh,” Naminé said, squinting and pointing. “ _That?_ ”

Vanitas looked closer at where she was pointing and breathed a sigh and an “oh, thank fuck” of relief when he saw the spider, its legs drawn into a compact little ball as it tried to make itself as inconspicuous as possible. Naminé said, “Hang on,” and went back to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a step stool. For one hysterical second, Vanitas was sure she was going to fling the entire stool at the spider to take it out, but she went with its more traditional usage, placing it on the floor of the shower to give herself a boost.

She reached up and held one hand in front of the spider, using the other to usher it onto her palm. Once it had scuttled there, she quickly cupped both hands around it, sealing it safely inside. Vanitas was sure he was about to pass out. “Is that a good idea?” he asked. “What if it stings you? Bites you,” he corrected, when Naminé paused to give him an incredulous look.

“It’s not venomous,” she said, hopping down to the floor and heading out to the living room, while Vanitas backed up a full six feet. “It doesn’t even jump or anything. It’s just a regular old house spider.”

He watched in terror and awe as she carried the spider across the room, almost unable to respond when she asked him to come help her with the window. After a few failed attempts, thanks to his anxiety-induced clumsiness, Vanitas finally managed to get it open and hurried back to his safety zone. Naminé lowered her hands, opening them outward like a flower in bloom so the spider could escape. In seconds, it had scuttled over the edge of the windowsill and out of sight, leaving the frail fragments of its old web behind in search of a better home.

Naminé shut the window and turned around again, and Vanitas let out a weak laugh. “Man,” he said as she dusted her hands on her pants, “what are you _made_ of?”

Naminé smiled and shrugged, and after a moment, when Vanitas remembered how awkward and ridiculous he looked, he said, “Well,” pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the bathroom, and went back inside to take his shower, though not before doing a thorough scan of the room and giving himself an admonishing look in the mirror.

* * *

Vanitas still hadn’t adjusted to how fast it got dark during the winter. Something about the beginning of a new year made him feel like things would start to get brighter again, but January was a beast of its own. It had a permeating coldness, the kind that stuck to the soles of his feet and lodged under his fingernails and made his teeth feel brittle. The sidewalks were coated in salt and slush, and Vanitas could swear the street lamps were lit by three p.m. He picked his way around the icy patches and snow drifts as he carried his groceries back to Naminé’s, and he nearly took down a trash can and dented a parked car as he tried to keep his balance, the bag of canned goods in his hand swinging like a pendulum.

For just one moment—one weak, tired moment—he thought he’d give anything to be walking on hot sand again instead of slippery, unpredictable ice and snow. But when he looked up at the soft glow of Naminé’s apartment window, the thought melted away as quickly as it had formed. He kicked his feet against the top step to get rid of as much winter residue as he could, and he went inside.

Naminé was in her room, and the door was closed, which Vanitas was used to. He went to the kitchen and started putting the food away, arranging the canned and packaged goods in the pantry and replacing the paper towel roll. He stored a few extra toiletries in the cabinet below the bathroom sink, and he stuck the bottles of lemonade he’d splurged on in the fridge. He left a box of tissues on the counter for Naminé and brought the other to the coffee table, pulling out the first tissue and fanning it like a bouquet. He looked out the window and stood motionless for a few minutes, staring at the parked car across the street.

When he realized what he was doing, he shook his head and went back to the kitchen, finishing up with the groceries and putting the bags under the sink. He’d already inflicted his awkwardness on Naminé in the relatively short time he’d been living here. She didn’t need to deal with his paranoia, too.

* * *

“What are you looking at?”

It was properly dark now, and Naminé had emerged from her bedroom bleary-eyed and tousle-haired, looking like she’d just woken up from a nap. She furrowed her brow at Vanitas, trying to make sense of the way he was sitting on the end of the couch closest to the window. He’d drawn the shade down, but he was peering through the space between it and the window frame, his gaze fixed on the street below.

“Nothing,” he said, without looking away. Naminé paused, then rolled her eyes and started to walk over. She stopped mid-stride when Vanitas held his hand up and waved her back.

“What is it?” she asked. Vanitas leaned closer to the window.

“There’s a car out there.”

“...isn’t that where they’re supposed to be?”

“There’s _one_ car out there,” Vanitas said, still not looking away. “A black car, and it’s been there since I got back.”

“Anyone in the driver’s seat?”

“I can’t tell. It’s not parked beneath a street lamp. And I think the windows are tinted.”

At this, Naminé frowned and came over to the window, and this time, Vanitas didn’t stop her. She stood beside him and leaned over his head, looking out the window without disturbing the shade. The car wasn’t anything fancy or new, and it was parked right up against the curb. She couldn’t see inside it at all, though it was hard to see anything through the winter darkness.

“Hmm,” she said, drawing back again and chewing on the inside of her cheek. “That is odd.”

“Yeah,” Vanitas said absentmindedly. A minute passed before Naminé instructed Vanitas to stay where he was, and by the time he registered what she’d said, she was already out the door.

“What the— _Naminé_ ,” he said, feeling a jolt in his chest as if she’d shut the door directly on it. He knew he should go after her, but she’d told him to stay, and after hours of stoking his paranoia, his sudden panic rooted him to the spot. With no other way to control the situation—without even his camera to document it—Vanitas turned to the window again, trying to both lean closer to see what was going on and shrink farther back into the dimly-lit apartment.

Naminé appeared on the sidewalk a moment later. She pulled her sweater around herself against the cold and looked both ways before heading toward the car, raising her arm in an attention-getting and intent-signaling wave. She didn’t even make it to the middle of the street before the car’s lights came on, the engine started up, and it pulled away from the curb, rolling gently around the corner and out of sight. Naminé stood in the center of the street, watching it go.

Only when it was gone, and stayed gone, did Vanitas exhale, his breath almost obscuring Naminé from view as it spread across the windowpane. _All right_ , he thought, _good. Come back now. Come back inside._

Naminé rubbed her arms, then turned around and reentered the building. Vanitas listened hard for her approach, but he still twitched nervously when she opened the door and stepped inside. She fastened both locks and took her slushy shoes off, leaving them on the rubber mat. “You were right,” she said simply. “Tinted windows.”

Vanitas nodded. “Didn’t catch the license plate, though,” Naminé went on. “I thought it might be from out of state, but it was too dark to tell.”

Vanitas continued to nod, and Naminé’s eyebrows knitted together in concern. “Are you okay?”

“...I mean...” Vanitas glanced out the window again, partly out of emotional evasion, and partly to let the sight of the empty curb soothe his lingering paranoia. Somehow, it looked even more ominous than before. “How’d you know that would work? That they’d leave? That it was even...”

He trailed off, but Naminé seemed to get where he was going. She shrugged and joined him on the couch. “If there was no one in the car, then it was safe,” she explained. “If it was just a random person, then I could ask if they were lost or needed assistance. And if it was someone else, then...well, look at how they were parked. Tinted windows, nondescript vehicle, avoiding the street lamps. People like that need the shadows to operate. If you throw some light on them or try to bring them out into the open, they scatter.”

Vanitas still couldn’t bring himself to look away from the window. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is what I was afraid of. It’s not safe for you, me being here.”

Naminé looked puzzled. “What?” she said, with a lightness and reassurance that felt completely out of place in the context of their conversation. “No, that started happening months before you came here.”

Vanitas finally looked at her. “…seriously?”

“Yeah, every couple of weeks, usually. Well, not the same car every time, but close enough. No one ever comes out. They just park there for a while, and if I don’t leave the apartment, eventually they drive away.”

She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that for a moment, Vanitas couldn’t figure out how to explain how messed up it was. Something must have come through on his face, however, because Naminé studied his expression before she said, “That’s not something I should be used to, is it?”

“...nah,” Vanitas said quietly, “probably not.”

Naminé nodded to herself and looked at a corner of the room while she thought this over, fitting the pieces together. “...then…who did _you_ think it was?”

Vanitas picked at the edge of his hoodie sleeve. “I dunno. I figured my grandfather might’ve sent someone to keep tabs on me. You know, after I ran out of his place.”

“You mean like a private investigator?”

Vanitas wrapped a loose thread around his fingertip until it was taut, then snapped it off, shrugging lightly. “More like...an enforcer, I guess.”

He was afraid of looking at Naminé now that he’d spoken, afraid of what her look, like his, would say. He waited for her response, but after a few moments of silence, he realized she wasn’t going to give him one. There were so many things to say that the options bottlenecked in her brain, and nothing came out. They sat together for a while longer, each stunned by what the other had said and not said about their life, but also sharing a sad kind of solace in it.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the night, but their questions still hung in the air, the foremost being the same for each of them: what on earth did you manage to run away from?

* * *

The following day, they tried to give each other as much space as possible for reasons they didn’t fully understand, though neither one of them was willing to leave the apartment. As a result, Vanitas spent most of his time on the couch or trying to clean up the kitchen, while Naminé stayed confined to her room. By early evening, Vanitas wondered if he should check and see if she wanted anything to eat before he started making dinner. He was still wrestling with whether or not to knock on her door, which he’d never done before, when she came out on her own and headed for the kitchen. After waiting a minute to gauge her mood from across the room, Vanitas decided it was all right to join her.

They didn’t speak more than they needed to as they prepared dinner, and they spoke even less as they ate together on the couch. Vanitas found himself wishing, not for the first time, that Naminé had a television, or even a clock—anything to create some background noise. The only sound was the occasional car passing by, a sound which refused to remain in the background and jumped right to the front of Vanitas’s mind. He reached the bottom of his bowl of soup and stirred the broken pieces of vegetables and noodles, splitting them further with the tip of his spoon.

Naminé laid her own spoon down in her bowl, and it touched the bottom with a _clink_ , the sound dampened by the uneaten broth. “I want to tell you about Marluxia,” she said. Vanitas didn’t react at first, only because he was so caught off guard that he was certain he’d misheard her. “Since you’re living here now—and if that sort of thing is going to keep happening—” She gestured at the window, her hand fluttering back and forth like a moth and belying her calm, quiet tone. “You deserve to know what you’re getting wrapped up in.”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Vanitas said, amazed that he was getting a second chance at this conversation and determined to prove he could do it right this time. “Seriously. You don’t have to tell me anything.”

It was more than just an echo of her words, all those months ago. He meant it as wholeheartedly as he knew how. But Naminé simply replied, “I want to,” and Vanitas had no counterargument for that.

Her story started off more or less how he expected. Naminé had already mentioned the hotel and the casino where she’d grown up before, which Marluxia co-owned with another man. “I had so many opportunities,” Naminé said, with careful gratitude in her voice. “He was the richest man I’d ever met. But he had a lot on his plate, always. So before I could see any of those opportunities or advantages, I had to help lighten the workload. It was just basic chores to start with, like housekeeping, restocking supplies, washing dishes, doing laundry. Nothing extreme.

“For a couple years, I was on call whenever they needed my help, or when Marluxia wanted me to stand with him for a photo op, and otherwise, I was mostly left to my own devices. Once I turned thirteen, though, they started calling on me a lot more. Larxene, um—head of security—she always knew where to find me, because of the cameras. She started assigning me chores, too, and even if they conflicted with what Marluxia told me to do, I was still expected to find a way to get them all done. So things got a little more stressful then.

“She gave me jobs that I didn’t think I was qualified to do. I knew it wasn’t legal for me to serve alcohol at that age—or even carry it—but the casino was like its own kingdom with its own laws. No one seemed to mind. She started playing these pranks, too, pretending that I’d done something wrong and upset a guest, or damaged company property, or even that there was an emergency and we were in danger.”

Naminé placed the bowl of soup on her lap, but her hands remained around it, as if she were afraid to let go. They were closer together now, and she was picking at a hangnail. “By the time I was fourteen, Marluxia decided I could start getting involved with his other business. I didn’t realize what he was asking me to do at first; he treated it like just another chore or errand. He’d send me into the city to pick up packages for him. I didn’t ask what was in them, or why he couldn’t just have them delivered. The easiest way to get by was to learn how to do the jobs, but not why I was doing them. It was hard not to figure it out eventually, though—even for me.

“It wasn’t the drugs themselves I was picking up—as far as I knew, he never had them anywhere near the property. But as for the money…I mean, it was a five-star hotel and casino. What better place to launder it? The kinds of people who stayed there, they were so rich that they didn’t even keep track of how much money they spent, or won, or lost. It all got mixed up in the shuffle.”

She seemed to realize that she was fidgeting, and she abruptly stopped, smoothing the hangnail back into place and lacing her fingers together around her bowl of soup. “Marluxia figured the money would be safest with me. I was good at going unnoticed, and when I wasn’t, people would just see a shy, scared little girl who wandered too far from home and couldn’t find her way back without help. Besides, he made sure he got my face out there with all those publicity photos at fundraisers and stuff. Larxene said I was his ultimate charity case.” Naminé gestured to the window again. “That’s why there have been cars,” she explained. “Ever since he found me—or ran into me, that day last year. They didn’t start showing up right away, but it didn’t take long.”

“…so…they’re what, private investigators or something?”

“I think so,” Naminé said. “It’s not the first time he’s done this. He used to hire people to monitor me when I went into town to collect his payments. I think he was trying to ensure that I wasn’t making any mistakes, or trying to run off with his money or spend it without authorization. But I think it was also to keep me safe.”

She shrugged and picked up her bowl again, sipping from it and apparently concluding her portion of the conversation. Vanitas stared down at his soup, the solids broken into so many pieces that they were essentially part of the broth now. “That’s really fucked up.”

Naminé swallowed the last of her soup and rested the bowl in her lap again. “I mean, it was only the last couple of years, to be fair. Most of the time I was with him, I was only assigned basic jobs around the hotel.”

“But you said that started before you even turned thirteen. And what’s ‘basic’ at a five-star resort, anyway?”

Naminé hesitated. “It really wasn’t that bad,” she said, picking her way carefully around the words as if she were still under surveillance. “The later stuff, sure—I never felt comfortable going out to collect packages for him, or anything like that. But cleaning, cooking…that’s just how I earned my keep. He took me in—he gave me clothes, and food, and a place to live. I don’t think being asked to pitch in was crossing a line. I owed him.”

“You took _me_ in,” Vanitas pointed out. “All that stuff he gave you, you’ve been giving to me for the past few weeks. Do I owe you the way you owed him?”

“What? Of course not. That’s completely…it’s different.”

“Yeah, it’s different. You were a kid. If anything, I _do_ owe you, and you didn’t owe him shit.”

“I just…” Naminé trailed off, searching inwardly, as if she knew she had an argument for this lying around somewhere, if she could only remember where she’d put it. Without waiting for her response, Vanitas put his soup bowl on the coffee table and started rummaging through the clutter. He unearthed a pencil and one of Naminé’s sketchbooks, flipping to a blank page. Naminé watched him scribble across the paper for a minute, and when he was finished, he turned it around and presented his artwork to her.

There were two stick figures floating in the white void of the page. They were hastily and messily drawn, but otherwise identical: the same height, the same pose, and the same lack of identifying features, as plain and generic-looking as could be. The first one had a speech bubble above its head, declaring, “You have to do whatever I say, whenever I want. I have to know where you are at all times, and you can’t go anywhere or do anything without my permission. If you disagree with this, then you don’t deserve to live here.”

The other stick figure had a speech bubble below its head that said, “Okay.”

Vanitas gave her a moment to read and absorb the words—it didn’t seem to take long. “Pretend this is us,” he said. Naminé looked profoundly uncomfortable at the mere idea. Vanitas pointed the pencil at the first figure’s speech bubble. “Is this how you feel about…y’know, this whole arrangement? Would you _ever_ say this to me?”

“Of course not,” she said again, quieter than before, but more emphatically. Vanitas pointed at the second figure.

“So why is it okay when this one’s you?”

Once again, Naminé couldn’t quite summon an answer. Vanitas put the sketchbook down between them, and Naminé picked it up, finally getting rid of her soup bowl and laying the book in its place. She studied the image and the text, realizing that while Vanitas had let her handle his camera before, and even let her waste some of his film on her amateur photographs, this was her first time seeing something he’d drawn.

She let her gaze rest on the stick figures, trying to discern some vital difference between them, something that made one inherently more worthy of criticism and accusations than the other. She turned back to Vanitas, offering him a small smile, both grateful and bitter. “It’s funny,” she said, “how people who say you’re worth nothing can still manage to find so many uses for you.”

Vanitas exhaled quickly, almost laughing. “Tell me about it. My grandfather…okay, I guess he didn’t really think I was _useful_ for anything. But the ‘worth nothing’ part, he’d totally agree with.”

Naminé frowned. “Then…why did you think he’d have sent someone to follow you? Why not just let you go?”

“Hell if I know. Probably just the principle of the thing. I mean…I know some stuff about him. Stuff that he wouldn’t want me to know. But I don’t think _he_ knows that I know.”

“…stuff like what?”

Vanitas hesitated. “I dunno,” he admitted. “I overheard things. He’d just talk, y’know, on the phone with people, or to himself sometimes. Maybe he was just used to living alone—and hey, I was used to being ignored, so, there you go. Perfect fit.”

Naminé watched him, patiently but expectantly, and Vanitas realized he was stalling. “I didn’t hear anything substantial,” he went on. “Just some names now and then, and weird conversations. It was mostly his tone that made it feel like something sketchy was going on.”

“Do you remember any of the names?”

“Nah. I mean, he was an idiot, but it wasn’t like he was shouting from the rooftops or anything. He mentioned an ‘Otsuka’ a few times—I dunno who that is. And one time I think he called some guy with a weird name—started with a Z.”

Naminé nodded slowly, letting this vague information sink in without making much of it. Gradually, her nodding stopped, and she gave Vanitas a hard look. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Or, well, could’ve been an X, I guess. ‘Cause ‘Xehanort,’ right?”

Naminé didn’t nod this time. She stared at Vanitas until he started to feel the need to break eye contact, and then she said, very softly, “Was it ‘Xemnas?’”

“…uh…yeah. I think it was.” Vanitas tried to be careful with what he asked next. “Do you…know him?”

“No. But Marluxia does.” Naminé paused, finally shifting her gaze away from Vanitas, her expression a mix of puzzlement and slow-dawning fear. “Maybe I did know him,” she said. “Marluxia and Luxord had a lot of VIPs visit the hotel. Sometimes they introduced me. Sometimes they didn’t. He could have been a ‘didn’t.’”

She seemed as if she were grappling with a slew of horrible realizations, things she could only piece together in hindsight. Vanitas had plenty of other questions, but he didn’t want to push her farther into her recollections than she was willing to go. However, as was often the case, Naminé didn’t wait for him to ask.

“Marluxia sold black powder,” she said, almost defiantly, as if she relished the opportunity to tell someone this secret as much as she feared it. “I mean, _he_ didn’t sell it—he helped…manage distribution, or something. And he handled the money. Not just his— _everyone’s_. He and Luxord, they had the perfect set-up for it. But that’s what it was, that was why I had to run his errands for him. And Xemnas, whoever he was— _is_ —he’s involved with it, somehow. I know it.”

Vanitas nodded vacantly, though he was attuned to every word she said. Naminé spoke more quietly when she asked her next question, as if she were afraid of startling him with its implication. “How long has your grandfather been with the university?”

“I dunno,” Vanitas said. “Forever. Decades.”

“Back when black powder was at its most popular here? With all the teenagers and college students?”

“Yeah…I guess so.”

“And he lives right on campus, doesn’t he?”

Vanitas rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling too tired to even be disturbed by the cascade of realizations and suspicions this line of questioning was evoking in him. “Yeah, he does.”

Naminé looked like she’d only just begun to ask her questions; her nervous energy was almost palpable. But when she saw Vanitas massage his face with his fingertips and lean back against the couch, she held off. She’d already given both of them more than enough to think about—or try to avoid thinking about—for one evening. She brought their bowls back to the kitchen, leaving them in the sink for now, and after a quick stop at the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face, she said good night to Vanitas and returned to her room.

* * *

Two days later, Naminé came back to the apartment well after dark, and Vanitas, trying to act like he hadn’t been worried, offered her one of the tuna melts he was just scraping off the pan for dinner, soaked in the oil of its own cheap ingredients.

In exchange, Naminé took a manila folder out of her bag and laid it on the coffee table. “What’s this?” Vanitas asked as he brought the food over and cleared a space for them to eat.

“Research,” Naminé said. “I went to the library to see if I could look up any information on that name you mentioned the other day. Otsuka.”

Vanitas was surprised, and yet not surprised at all, and as he took a seat on the couch, he couldn’t think of anything to say except, “All right. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

He’d left some room beside him, but Naminé chose to sit on the floor. “Okay,” she said, pulling out the first printed article. “So, this one’s pretty old—it’s from the mid-2000s—but it was the earliest piece of information I could find. It’s about this car accident he was involved in—not as the driver or anything, just a good samaritan.”

“Okay…” Vanitas said, taking the first bite of his sandwich and blotting cheese grease and butter off his chin with a paper towel. Naminé waved her hand.

“That’s not the important part. The article mentioned that he worked at a research lab. A pharmacological research lab, specializing in neurology and the development of experimental drugs.” She raised her eyebrows pointedly.

“…okay,” Vanitas said again, “that’s sounding a little suspicious.” He got up to grab another paper towel from the kitchen, bringing one back for Naminé, too. “Got anything else?”

“Oh, yes,” Naminé said, flipping through the pages. “I looked up the lab name and any connection it might have with black powder. I thought it was a long shot, but it turned out there was this big scandal back in the day with this drug they were working on. It had a lot of similarities to black powder—affecting memories, that kind of thing—and there was so much public outcry that they had to halt their development. They probably had—or _have_ —all the ingredients you’d need to synthesize black powder right there in the building.”

It was both endearing and a little unsettling, how invested Naminé was getting in her research. Vanitas figured it probably felt better to turn over stones and uncover cold, hard facts than to tiptoe around them, waiting to see what might jump out. “Yeah,” he said, “getting a little more suspicious. Still could be a coincidence, though.”

“That’s not all,” Naminé said, already flipping to just the page she needed. _Of course it’s not_ , Vanitas thought, starting on the second half of his melt. “I went to the lab’s website and checked their staff list. It’s huge, and most people don’t have a photo or a profile or anything, but I found him. He was referred to as a security officer in the first article, but he’s currently in charge of their warehouse operations—receiving shipments, managing the inventory, and so on, I’m guessing. You know…their inventory of chemicals.”

Vanitas didn’t need to say for the third time how suspicious that sounded. Naminé was looking at him with grim understanding, and she laid the paper flat on the coffee table, pointing at Otsuka’s name. “This is a very specific person for your grandfather to be mentioning. He’s not distinguished. He’s not a scientist, and he’s certainly not attaching his name to any research studies or dissertations. Of all the people that your grandfather could have name-dropped at this kind of facility…why him?”

Vanitas didn’t know how to answer that, but Naminé’s question was more about the possibilities than a concrete answer at this point in time. “Do you think…” She took a breath and sighed quietly. “Do you think your grandfather is using the school for this? Using his connections and stuff? I mean, from what you said, it sounds like…” She shrugged, and Vanitas shrugged back.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I wouldn’t put anything past him. And it kinda makes sense. He was always harping on about me not doing well in science courses. If this is what he’s been up to for all these years, maybe he was planning to make me join the family business. Fuck, maybe he’s the one manufacturing this shit.”

Naminé’s eyes went wide, as if they’d cracked the entire case open, right then and there. “You think so?”

“…not really,” Vanitas said, slumping in his seat. “It’s just…he’s been around for so long. He basically runs the entire school board. If he wanted to, he could probably pull it off. But at the same time, I don’t think anything about the school itself is related to this. Besides being, like, a recruiting ground, I guess. But I don’t think any of ‘his people’ are working there or anything. I think he just can’t help taking over a place, no matter where he goes. People defer to him because they think they have to. Not even people at the school—just random people who aren’t involved in his life or his work, people who shouldn’t be in his sphere of influence at all. But they put themselves in it anyway. It’s like people forget they have their own fucking brains around him.”

Naminé had another bitter smile on her face. “It’s the same with Marluxia,” she said. “People want his approval, no matter what. They don’t even have to know him, or work for him, or be affiliated with him. They see that he has money and that he gets articles written about him, and that tells them all they need to know.”

“Exactly. And if you try to say _anything_ that isn’t mindless praise, no one believes you. I’ve tried to challenge stuff my grandfather’s said before, and it’s like a whole horde appears to defend him without even listening to what I was actually saying. People just come out of nowhere, dying to do his work for him. If you challenge him, or question him, or just don’t defer to him on every single thing, it’s like you have to face his entire mob, a hundred versus one. It’s insane.”

“I know.”

They sat together for a while, the remains of their tuna melts congealing until they were glued to the plates. “If your grandfather knows Xemnas,” Naminé said slowly, “then he might know Marluxia. Even if he’s not involved in all this.”

“He probably is,” Vanitas said, too tired to try and convince himself that the situation wasn’t that bad and that they were just jumping to conclusions and blowing things out of proportion. He’d thought that about the car, too, and Naminé and his own gut instincts had been quick to prove him wrong. “And yeah. He might know him. But I dunno what to do with that.”

“Neither do I.” They sat together for a while longer, until Naminé stood up, stretching briefly. “Well…this is a lot for one evening,” she said, with almost inappropriate humor. Vanitas even managed a weak laugh. She tilted her head toward the bathroom and said, “I’m gonna take a shower. We don’t have to talk about this anymore when I come back out. All right?”

Vanitas nodded, not sure if he’d take her up on that or not. He was staring at the cold remains of his sandwich, trying to decide if he hated himself enough to finish it, when he heard Naminé say, “Hey, Vanitas.”

He looked up and saw her standing in the bathroom doorway. For a moment, she hesitated, and then she said, “A hundred versus two.”

Vanitas had absolutely no idea what to say to that, and Naminé didn’t give him a chance to figure it out. She lingered in the doorway, then quickly disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

While the shower was running, and her erratic but not unpleasant humming drifted out occasionally, Vanitas leaned back against the couch and thought. Of the many ways he’d tried to handle or avoid conflict over the years, the whole “safety in numbers” method had never really occurred to him, because it had never been an option. He’d learned how to rely on himself rather than waste time waiting for potential allies who, in his experience, could never be counted on to show up.

But all it took was someone planting the idea in his head, and his whole mentality changed. Two wasn’t a lot, he admitted to himself, but it was twice as many as one.

When Naminé emerged from the bathroom, she was wearing a pale green bathrobe and squeezing her hair dry with a towel. Back when Vanitas first started living here—it felt like a lifetime ago already, though it was still less than a month—they had both made a much bigger effort toward modesty. Vanitas had remained fully dressed at all times, usually in several layers, and Naminé changed out of her pajamas before she left her room in the morning, and brought her outfits into the bathroom when she showered.

By now, out of necessity, familiarity, and sheer emotional exhaustion, they’d given up on trying to maintain that level of propriety. They were still modest—Naminé’s bathrobe came down past her knees and was always cinched snugly—but she rejoined Vanitas on the couch and flopped down next to him, wrapping her hair sloppily in the towel to soak up the excess water.

She kept her promise not to bring up their previous conversation, but Vanitas had been rolling it over in his mind during her short absence, and he realized he had more to say after all. He was reluctant to bring it up—not just because it would force him to revisit an awkward phase of his life, which he’d rather just avoid forever if possible, but because once he suggested what he was about to suggest, it was going to open doors that couldn’t be closed again. It was going to make everything he and Naminé had been speculating about this evening undeniably real, and it was going to turn vague suspicions into hard claims, which he would be expected to stand behind and try to prove.

But the door was already ajar, he figured, if amateur sleuths like him and Naminé could piece this much together already. All he was really doing was giving it a little nudge, and letting it swing open the rest of the way on its own.

“Hey,” he said quietly, before he could lose his nerve. “Do you still keep in touch with Ven?”

Naminé looked at him, openly surprised. “Not really, no…we haven’t seen each other for a while. He sounded pretty busy with school the last time we talked.”

“You’ve still got his number, though, right?”

“Yeah…?” Naminé said, uncomprehending and curious. “Um…you want to talk to Ven?”

“No,” Vanitas said, trying to sound self-assured as he passed what he knew was a point of no return. He took one full breath, strengthened his resolve, and said, “I wanna talk to his friends.”


	2. A Request I Chose To Ignore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: oh boy, I'm psyched to start updating this series regularly again!  
> spongebob narrator: six months later...

The early months of the year were like a universal reset button, a return to neutrality after the slew of holiday events in the preceding weeks. The short, fast-darkening days imparted no energy, but neither did they demanded any back. It was one of the few times of year when it was perfectly acceptable to spend an evening ensconced in fleece pajamas and blankets, drinking hot chocolate with sugary sweet clots of cocoa powder at the bottom of the mug, indulging in video games or half-hearted TV binges until it was finally time to turn in and do it all again the next day. What February drained out of the world with cold, gray blandness, it made up for with equally bland routine and predictability.

“So, _how_ did he get Ven’s number again?” Aqua asked, glancing out the kitchen window at the sidewalk below—still empty, for now. Terra shook a plate over the sink before setting it on the drying rack.

“From Naminé,” he said. When Aqua gave him a quizzical look, he shrugged. “I dunno. I assume they’re dating now. Or something.”

“And what does he want, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Terra repeated. He rarely had trouble admitting his ignorance, but he was getting tired of being asked questions that required the same disappointing answer. “All I know is that Ven told me that Vanitas told Naminé to tell him…to tell us…” He finished the last dish and moved on to the flatware with a sigh. “I don’t know. Believe me, it was a hassle just figuring out who was delivering which message to who. I wound up telling Ven to give Naminé my number, and then she could give it to Vanitas, and he could just contact me himself if it was so important.”

“He couldn’t even tell you what he wants to talk about?”

“Not over the phone, apparently.”

Aqua might have scoffed, if she’d had the energy. “Well, whatever it is, he’d better make it quick,” she said instead. “I’ve got shit to do today.”

“Yeah,” Terra said without looking up from the sink. “We all have shit to do.”

He regretted it as soon as he said it, or at least regretted his tone. He stopped rinsing his handful of forks and set them on the rack, still drizzled with a few suds here and there. He dried his hands on a dishtowel, then rubbed his eyes. He wondered if he could get away with just going to his room for a nap and letting Aqua handle everything herself, as he knew she wanted to. She’d already kicked Ven out for the afternoon, insisting that if they _had_ to meet with Vanitas, and if they _must_ do it in the apartment, then Ven shouldn’t be on the premises when it happened. She had reassured him warmly and confidently that she was just being overprotective, and asked him to be a friend and indulge her. But once he’d packed his messenger bag with his laptop and snacks and a book and headed off to Bailey’s, Aqua’s demeanor had gone steely. “We’re not having them here at the same time,” she’d said. “If Vanitas can’t even tell us what the big deal is, then we can’t say for sure whether Ven should be here for it. And that’s that.”

The apartment had been simmering with tension since then, and until Vanitas arrived, Terra and Aqua had no one to direct their snippiness at but each other. But unlike Aqua, Terra was a stalwart believer in not getting worked up about a situation until it was absolutely necessary—and sometimes not even then. So, for the time being, he did his best to make the day feel as regular as he could, and to steer the conversation toward more familiar waters. “How’s Tifa doing?” he asked. “Haven’t seen her in a while.”

“She’s good,” Aqua said as she looked out the window again, so briefly that she might not have even realized she was doing it. “Things are slow at Seventh Heaven right now, so she’s got more free time lately.”

“Must be nice.”

“It would be, if I didn’t have labs and research papers every fucking week.”

Terra snorted. “Typical,” he said, and Aqua turned back to him to share a small smile. They might have been too tired to truly improve each other’s moods at the moment, but commiserating about their busy schedules and endless workloads was the next best thing. It had been that way for them since childhood: when they couldn’t rely on the world to make sense, they could at least rely on each other.

They stayed in the kitchen for another five minutes or so, Terra drying the dishes and Aqua standing guard at the window. She stood up a little straighter when Terra’s phone dinged, and she watched him closely as he checked it. “He’s here,” he said, typing back a quick response. Aqua glanced over her shoulder again and looked down at the sidewalk, where Vanitas was standing with his hands in his pockets, loitering at the front door and awaiting permission to come inside.

Something about that small bit of consideration put Aqua even more on edge. It was completely at odds with her general perception of Vanitas, and she didn’t like it. No matter how he chose to behave now, whatever kind of respectful or respectable front he tried to put on, she couldn’t shake the memories of Ven coming home after school complaining about how his classmate had given him a hard time _again_ , blaming Ven for something that had gone wrong in their group project, or just giving him derisive and judgmental looks in passing. Truthfully, it had been months since Ven last complained about Vanitas, but Aqua’s ability and desire to hold grudges were unparalleled. They were matched only by her refusal to believe that teenage boys could ever truly grow out of their flaws.

“He’s coming up,” Terra said, just as Aqua saw Vanitas check his phone again and enter the building. Terra pocketed his own phone and started heading across the kitchen. “Told him I’d meet him at the door. I figured it’s probably best if we do this in the living room—sound good to you?”

None of it sounded particularly good to Aqua, but she gave Terra a begrudging sigh and followed him anyway. While he went to the foyer, Aqua relocated to the farthest window, leaning back against the sill. As she resumed her post and crossed her arms, she could hear the boys’ stilted greeting at the door, and she couldn’t help wondering why it always had to be so awkward whenever someone new came here.

A few seconds later, Terra reentered the living room, and Vanitas trailed in after him like a shrunken shadow. He looked very different from the way he did in Aqua’s memories. His hair was duller, with less lift. He looked smaller somehow, his clothes a little baggier. But mostly, he looked exhausted, pale and wrung dry and washed out like a piece of driftwood. He looked like he’d been sanded down and worn away, though whatever had put him through that process had done nothing to smooth out his edges.

He met Aqua’s gaze and looked away again out of reflex, to lessen the intensity of her scrutiny and to scope out the living room. He didn’t seem too interested in the details of the apartment as much as the space of it; he glanced from wall to wall, then up at the ceiling, and even craned his neck to see down the hallway that led to Ven’s room.

“Nice place,” he said, while Aqua bristled in defensiveness at the compliment. Vanitas nodded at her and added, with only halfhearted sarcasm, “I’m surprised you can stand sharing an apartment with these guys.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t,” Aqua replied. “I’m living with my girlfriend now.”

“Sweet,” Vanitas said dully. He glanced around the room again, his gaze gravitating toward Terra this time. As expected, Terra rose to the occasion, gesturing to an armchair that sat facing the couch.

“Well, if you wanna take a seat, we can get started, I guess. I’m pretty curious to know what this is about,” he added with a laugh. It wasn’t quite a natural laugh, but it was something, at least—better than the way Aqua was watching Vanitas’s every move, even when he was doing exactly as he was told. He perched on the edge of the armchair, as if he were wary of accepting what was offered to him too freely. Terra took the couch, and Aqua stayed right where she was.

Once they were all settled, there was a moment of silence. Vanitas looked deeply focused on his thoughts, but also preoccupied with them, worrying over which ones to voice first. Terra waited patiently, something he was exceedingly good at, but when it became clear that Vanitas didn’t know where to begin, Terra decided to give him a little nudge. Better him than Aqua, he figured, whose nudges were liable to bruise. “So,” he began, “what’s up?”

Vanitas took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “So…I don’t really know where to start.”

“…all right,” Terra said carefully. “Well…just start from the beginning, I guess.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing…I’m not really sure how far back to go. Or how far back any of this goes. I don’t even totally…” He sighed. “It’s just hard to explain. And, like, I know you guys—I know we aren’t friends or anything, obviously, and I know this seems super random. But I figured you guys know RGU pretty well, so it just seemed, like…relevant, I guess.”

“Is this about Ven?” Aqua asked. Vanitas looked at her, his wariness momentarily overcome by surprise.

“What?” he said. “No. Of course not. I mean, not as far as I know, anyway.”

“Well, hang on,” Terra said, raising his hand in Aqua’s direction to keep her from lifting the kid clear off the floor by his shirt collar and asking what the hell “not as far as I know” was supposed to mean. “So…what, there’s something going on at the university? Because Ven’s not even taking college-level courses anymore. At least not this semester.”

Unexpectedly, a small flicker of relief passed over Vanitas’s face. “Seriously?”

“Yeah,” said Terra, who saw that relief and didn’t understand it, but nevertheless felt an instinctive desire to add to it. “He’s going full-time at Radiant Garden High now. Maybe till he graduates—we don’t know for sure yet. We’re just gonna play it by ear, I think.”

“Not that any of this is _relevant_ ,” Aqua cut in, giving Terra a warning look to stop sharing Ven’s personal information with the kid she clearly still considered to be his mortal enemy.

“Okay,” Terra said, steadily reeling them all back in. “Not about Ven—got it. So…what _is_ this about, then?”

Vanitas hesitated. Whatever it was, it was teetering right on the edge of his tongue, but he was holding back. After a few seconds of waiting, Terra offered to get him a glass of water, but Vanitas declined, possibly afraid that if he swallowed anything, the words would go down with it, never to be spoken. He took a much more shallow breath than he intended, and then, summoning all of his fraying nerves, he forced himself to say, “It’s about my grandfather.”

Whatever Terra had expected to come out of his mouth, it wasn’t that. “All right,” he said slowly. “Well, we heard you, uh…moved out, I think, a while back? Just rumors, of course, but I guess I figured you’d gone back home or something.”

Vanitas shook his head to himself, as if Terra had said something that he didn’t even realize was funny or possibly stupid. “Look, here’s the thing,” Terra said, almost apologetically. “If this is between you and your grandfather, then it’s not really our place to get involved. If you know about something that’s going on at the university, I guess that’s a little different, but if it’s just a family issue, then—”

“It’s not a family issue,” Vanitas said firmly. “It’s…look. It’s _about_ my grandfather, but it’s not about him _as_ my grandfather, you know? It’s more than that. It’s just…” He raised his hands and rubbed his eyes, and before Terra could attempt to guide the conversation along for him, Vanitas blurted out the only thing he could think of to sum it all up. “He’s a criminal.”

He brought his hands back down to his lap and looked at Terra, who was looking at him, predictably, like he was insane. “What?” Terra said. “What do you mean, ‘a criminal?’”

“Are you fucking kidding me? What are you majoring in again?”

Terra paused, taken aback by the sudden burst of attitude. Aqua, who’d been expecting it from the start, stepped in to pick up his slack. “In what way is he a criminal?” she asked, cutting to the quick with so little hesitation that Vanitas knew she wasn’t taking him seriously for even one second. If she seemed to accept his claims at face value, it was only because she knew that it was the fastest way to get the conversation over and done with so they could kick Vanitas out and get on with their lives. He racked his brains for any explanation that sounded remotely credible, and as usual, he came up with nothing.

“Is it something to do with the college?” Aqua went on. “Embezzling funds, or something like that?”

Vanitas let out a snort of laughter—he couldn’t help it. Her guess was so far off the mark that it exhausted him to think about how much time and energy it would take to get her closer to the right answer, and since he didn’t have that kind of time or energy at his disposal anymore, he simply said, “Try ‘distributing black powder’ instead.”

He meant to stop there, to give that revelation time to sink in, and to gauge Aqua and Terra’s reactions before he continued. But once he said the words, more words followed. He didn’t have a plan or a structure or any kind of speech prepared; he just spoke, spilling everything he could think of. And as he spilled it, he realized how shallow the cup of his knowledge really was. He had no proof and hadn’t witnessed anything firsthand. He had nothing more substantial than a handful of names overheard during late-night phone calls, or a general aura of control and suspicion, or the harsh treatment his grandfather seemed to reserve for people who couldn’t retaliate, people whose reputations were under his influence. The harder Vanitas tried to boost his credibility, the more he sounded like he had no idea what he was talking about.

The looks on his listeners’ faces didn’t inspire confidence. Aqua’s posture didn’t falter, but her jaw had gone slack, and a glance in Terra’s direction reassured her that he looked as bowled over as she felt. She was just wondering if she should try to interrupt Vanitas’s monologue—and if so, _when_ , as the kid seemed to have no pauses built into it—when Terra took care of it for her by raising his hand.

“—even makes sense when you think about it, I mean, there’s a research facility _right_ in—” Vanitas skidded to an abrupt halt, as if he himself was surprised by how long he’d been allowed to speak. Terra stared at him for a few seconds, slowly lowering his hand again.

“…okay,” he began, “I’m just gonna level with you, here…I don’t even know where…”

He tried to gather himself, almost wishing that Vanitas weren’t waiting so patiently and attentively. He knew he probably shouldn’t have cut the kid off when he didn’t have anything to say himself, but he wasn’t sure how much more he could handle. “It’s just,” he tried again, “this all sounds a little bit…uh…”

He glanced at Aqua for help, but before she could come up with a non-insulting adjective, Vanitas said, “I know how it sounds. But it’s the truth.”

Terra looked away from Aqua, but he didn’t look at Vanitas. He stared somewhere between them, scratching the back of his neck. “No offense,” he said, “but you sound like you’re trying to convince yourself. I mean…where’s all this _coming_ from?”

“It’s coming from the fact that my grandfather’s a piece of shit, that’s where it’s coming from,” Vanitas spat, clearly having gotten over his initial hesitation now that he’d reached the much more familiar territory of accusations and insults. Terra frowned.

“Hey,” he said, tapping into his rarely-used stern voice. “Listen, we’re willing to hear you out—within reason—but I told you we’re not going to get involved in a family dispute. If you’ve got a problem with your grandfather, that’s between the two of you.”

“Not if I’m right about this,” Vanitas shot back. He gave Terra an appraising sort of look, as if he were the one who needed to prove his credibility to Vanitas now. “You think I’m wrong?” he asked. “Or lying?”

“Honestly, this sounds more like a prank than anything,” Terra said, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. “Like…you’re talking about the most senior faculty member at one of the most renowned schools in the state.” Vanitas scowled, but Terra went on before he could interject. “ _And_ you’re talking about one of the most serious issues this community has faced in decades. This stuff isn’t a joke—teenagers were getting hooked on it, they think it might have caused brain damage, there were all these investigations back in the day—”

“Yeah,” Vanitas said tersely, “no shit. I can read.”

“I’m just saying. This is…a lot.”

“I know it’s a lot. That’s why I came here. You think I wouldn’t have just texted you if that was an option?”

“Hey, look. We’re sitting here with you, right? We’re hearing you out. But this is just…” Terra scratched the back of his head again, a little rougher than before. “I’m sorry, but it sounds crazy. Just try to see this from our point of view. You come here without telling us _anything_ , and then you dump all of this on us out of nowhere? It’s just—and I really don’t want to insult you here—”

“Fuck it, say whatever you want about me, but it’s the truth.”

“Based on _what_? Some names you’ve heard mentioned on the phone? People you’ve never met? Look, it sounds like you and your grandfather don’t get along, and I’m sorry. That sucks. But you can’t—”

“Are you serious? Like I just go around accusing everyone I don’t get along with of being in the fucking mob.”

“Dude, you’re so far beyond that—you’re talking about shit in other towns and cities, _miles_ away. Scientific research facilities? Some fucking nightclub—what does _that_ have to do with anything?”

“A lot,” Vanitas said, putting an incredible amount of pressure on those two short words. The emphasis didn’t escape Terra, and it only made him dig his heels in deeper.

“Yeah?” he said, doing what he promised himself he wouldn’t do and stooping to Vanitas’s level, matching his challenging tone. “I don’t suppose you have any evidence for _that_?”

“No,” Vanitas said, and something about the straightforwardness and acceptance in his tone made it even harder for Terra to hold back his annoyance.

“Then what makes you so sure about _any_ of this?” he asked, finally pushing past his surface-level confusion and getting to the core of the problem. And in response, Vanitas sat up straighter, squared his shoulders, and, looking Terra in the eye, said, “Naminé told me.”

For a moment, there was silence between them. As impulsively as Vanitas might have spoken, he didn’t look surprised by his own words. There was a finality in his tone, something that he clearly felt couldn’t be questioned or argued with. Terra, on the other hand, looked openly lost. “What?” he asked. “What does Naminé have to do with this?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, ‘nothing?’ You just said—”

“Forget it, all right? Just leave her out of this.”

“What are you _talking_ about? You’re the one who brought her up. If she’s involved in…I don’t know, whatever it is you think is going on—”

“Yeah, what I _think_ is going on. Nice.”

“Oh, come on, even you have to hear how insane you sound—”

“—said you were willing to hear me out; if you’re not—”

“We’ve taken classes with the man, for Christ’s sake. The fact that you’re even _saying_ any of this, let alone expecting us to _believe_ it—”

“Listen,” Aqua said, quietly but steadily, and to her surprise, they did. It took them a few seconds to stop speaking over each other—both seemed determined to get the last word, even if it went unheard—but they cut themselves off with a glare and waited for her to say her piece. She took her time, wanting to make sure she knew what she was going to say, and that they were actually willing to listen to it. Finally, she said, “Even if what you’re saying is true—”

Vanitas scoffed at her continued doubt, but Aqua was undeterred. “Even if it were true,” she repeated, “why come to us? We’re just students. We’re still in training; we can’t actually _do_ anything about…any of this,” she said, waving her hand vaguely, reluctant to put any stock in Vanitas’s claims, but also reluctant to dismiss them outright.

Vanitas looked at her as if what she’d just said was the most unreasonable thing any of them had said so far. “Are you kidding me?” he asked, and Aqua, taken aback by the disbelief in his voice, said nothing. “This isn’t a test run,” he went on. “It’s real fucking life. This is happening right now, and it’s been happening for a long time, and it’s gonna _keep_ happening until someone actually _does_ something about it. I mean, you two are criminal justice majors, right? Well, I’m giving you the criminal. You should know how to do the rest. And if you don’t, it’s not because you’re ‘still in training,’ it’s because you just don’t want to. And whatever, that’s your fucking prerogative, but at least own up to it. Just admit that you’re like everyone else who had every reason to think something sketchy was going on and decided that it wasn’t the right time, or they weren’t the right people. They just didn’t want to, either. So, I don’t know, maybe you guys are star students, but right now you’re just like every other person who decided not to do a goddamn thing about it.”

All throughout his rant, Aqua seemed to withdraw, taking his words in with her and dealing with them in the privacy of her own mind. Terra, however, grew more and more focused on Vanitas himself. His astonishment turned into annoyance again, and finally anger, and before he knew it he had risen to his feet, as if to physically put himself and Aqua on the same level, towering over Vanitas who still sat obediently in the chair he’d been given, waiting for their verdict. And when Terra finally gave it, he simply said, “I think it’s time for you to go.”

Vanitas stared up at him, but it was without the petty teenage vitriol Terra had been expecting. He looked floored and he said nothing, at a loss, maybe even hoping Terra would yell at him instead, giving Vanitas another chance to defend himself and make himself heard. But Terra stood there like the face of a sheer cliff, unyielding and without a crack in his resolve.

As surprised as Vanitas was by Terra’s command, Terra looked just as surprised when he complied. Whether he’d expected Vanitas to be more rebellious, or hadn’t expected himself to sound so firm and resolute, he couldn’t say. Either way, Vanitas stood up without another word, not giving Terra a chance to rescind, if he even would have. He didn’t storm out angrily or petulantly, but he kept a hard and frustrated glare at nothing in particular on his face as he exited the room and showed himself out.

Terra and Aqua stood motionless, not even looking at each other until they heard the door open and close. Once they were alone in the apartment again, Terra snorted in disbelief and shook his head, running his hand up through his hair like he tended to do when he had trouble grappling with the world around him. “Can you _believe_ that kid?” he asked, starting to pace around the room as if he needed to walk off the pure audacity of their recent houseguest and his ridiculous claims.

As he scoffed and ranted, starting sentences and then starting them over again whenever he turned around and changed directions, Aqua stayed put, still leaning against the windowsill. She held onto the edge of it with a hand braced on either side of her, not sure if she was just hanging on or about to push herself off to stand upright. She stayed like that, leaning forward, her back to the outside world and her gaze drifting across the carpet, half-hearing Terra’s rants about Vanitas’s gall and disrespect and general lack of moral fiber, and adding his words to the thoughts already brewing in her own head.

“I mean, for real,” Terra finally said, having exhausted himself and ready to turn to Aqua for emotional backup. He held his arm out to the front door as if Vanitas were still standing there and said, “Can you _believe_ this shit?”

Aqua didn’t answer right away, and when Terra realized she had something to say beyond simply agreeing with him, he let his arm fall back to his side and waited. When Aqua finally decided how to phrase her reply, she said, slowly, “I can’t say I believe everything he told us.”

“...but...?”

Aqua hesitated, then shrugged. “It doesn’t mean I don’t believe him.”

Terra stared. “ _What_?” he asked. “What does that even _mean_?”

“I don’t know. You saw him,” Aqua said, nodding once at the empty armchair. “Something’s got him stressed out, and frankly pretty paranoid. I mean, the last time we saw him, he was just your run-of-the-mill rude teenager, and now he shows up talking like a full-on conspiracy theorist? Maybe he’s wrong, but he believes it enough for it to scare him. That’s not nothing.”

“Yeah, good point,” Terra said, “because what else could he possibly have to be stressed out about? Definitely not the fact that he threw away his future and burned all his bridges when he was set up for an easy ride at RGU. You know how many kids would’ve killed to be in his position? You know how much Ven could’ve done with the kind of opportunities and connections Vanitas was _born_ with? And he went and wrecked it because he’s a spoiled brat, going through his rebellious teenage phase _way_ too late, and instead of owning up to it, he gets pissed at his grandfather and wants to get back at him. This is probably all some stupid, elaborate prank to try and ruin his reputation.”

“What kind of prank would that be?” Aqua countered. “Coming here, to us, looking like he’s about to unravel, making the wildest accusations he can think of? Even if we accepted everything he said, where’s the punchline? How does he come out on top?”

Terra stared at her for a few seconds. “This is bullshit,” he said, as plainly as he could, as if he were trying to explain something very basic and simple to a person who insisted on overcomplicating it. “Seriously. Are you telling me that you think Professor Xehanort is, like—or could even _possibly_ be—some kind of criminal mastermind the way Vanitas made him sound? Involved in some decades-old crime syndicate, responsible for the spread of black powder, and who even knows what else?”

Aqua looked at the mantle, giving Terra’s words real consideration, which was the opposite effect he’d intended for them to have. He lowered his head a little to try and get in her line of sight. “I’m seriously asking now,” he said. “Are you really, honestly saying that in our last semester of getting our masters in _criminal justice_ , our first order of business should be investigating the oldest, most renowned professor at our university? Think carefully, Aqua. Is that an idea you even want to _entertain_?”

Aqua kept staring at the mantle, waiting for Terra to finish speaking, and then taking a few more minutes to sort out her own thoughts without his interference. Terra waited, too, more than ready for her to yield the argument, admit that this afternoon had been a miserable waste of time and interruption to their busy schedules, and agree to put it behind them and never speak of it again.

When Aqua finally looked at Terra, she said, “You’re right. I have no evidence that could convince anyone that anything Vanitas told us was true. I don’t have any kind of argument for why I don’t think he was just messing with us.” She let go of the windowsill, brushing a few flakes of old paint off her palms. “All I can say is that I don’t think he was lying.”

“…all right,” Terra said. “Again: what does that mean? You don’t believe that what he said was true. But you don’t think it was a lie, either. So…what was it?”

“I don’t know,” Aqua said simply. “It _sounded_ crazy. But…” She dusted her hands off on her pants, then stood up straight and looked Terra in the eye, giving him all she had left to offer: a shrug.

Terra shook his head and turned away, rubbing his eyes and forehead and muttering, “Whatever,” under his breath as he returned to the kitchen, escaping the living room and the feelings of frustration and uncertainty that clouded it. Aqua remained, trying to steep herself in those feelings a little longer, if only to see if she could make any more sense of them. She didn’t expect to, but something inside her would have nagged at her brain all day if she didn’t try.

It wasn’t long before Terra came back, though he went to the foyer immediately to take his coat off the hook. “I’m gonna go see where Ven’s at,” he said, patting his pockets to find his mittens, and to give himself something to focus on so he wouldn’t have to look at Aqua. “Might grab an early dinner if he hasn’t eaten yet—or even if he has, I guess. That kid has a bottomless stomach, I swear.”

“All right,” Aqua said, smiling a little in spite of the lingering tension in the apartment. Terra still wasn’t looking at her, but he must have heard the smile in her voice, because he relaxed a bit and added, “We can bring something back, if you want to stick around for a while. I know Ven’s dying to catch up with you.”

“Did he say that?”

“No, obviously,” Terra said, finally looking at her again now that the conversation had eased back to a topic he understood. “But he never shuts up about you. Whenever something funny or mildly noteworthy happens, he’s like, ‘We gotta remember to tell Aqua about this next time we see her!’”

Aqua’s smile broadened. “All right,” she said, unable to hold back a small laugh. “I’ll stay for a while, then. But only because I miss Ven. And I can’t resist free food.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Terra said, with a weary but sincere chuckle. “I’ll text you when we figure out what we’re getting.”

“Cool.” They exchanged brief nods as Terra finished bundling up, and once he was gone, Aqua went to the kitchen, trying not to feel too disappointed as she texted Tifa to let her know that she’d be late getting home that night. It was worth it to spend time with Ven and Terra, but Aqua couldn’t escape that guilty twinge she always felt whenever she had to split her priorities among multiple people. Once she got a response from Tifa (“ _good, now I won’t feel bad about eating all our leftovers myself ;) tell the guys i say hi! seeya tonight xoxo_ ”), she put her phone down, rolled up her sleeves, and turned the faucet on to finish cleaning the kitchen.

She tried not to think about what Vanitas had said, and when she found herself thinking about it anyway, she tried to enter a sort of zen state, letting the thoughts pass through her mind like the water over her hands. The apartment still felt tense, and although Aqua no longer lived here, she wondered if the atmosphere would cling to her and potentially invade her and Tifa’s apartment as well. And even more than the tension that Vanitas had introduced to their small, comfortable world, it was Aqua’s fleeting disagreements with Terra that threw her the most off balance.

But it was hard for an emotional funk to find a place to nestle and hide when dishes and countertops were being wiped clean, and the room made to smell of citrus-scented soap rather than the staleness of a February spent indoors. And while Aqua and Terra had butted heads plenty of times in the past, they’d never had a fight so bitter that the taste of it couldn’t be washed away with some overpriced take-out.


End file.
